Conversion Between Datatypes

There are many different situations in which you need to convert data from one datatype to another. You can perform this conversion in two ways:

Implicitly

By allowing the PL/SQL runtime engine to take its “best guess” at performing the conversion.

Explicitly

By calling a PL/SQL function or operator to do the conversion.

In this section I will first review how and when PL/SQL performs implicit conversions, and then focus attention on the functions and operators available for explicit conversions.

Implicit Data Conversion

Whenever PL/SQL detects that a conversion is necessary, it attempts to change the values as required to perform the operation. You would probably be surprised to learn how often PL/SQL performs conversions on your behalf. Figure 7-2 shows what kinds of implicit conversions PL/SQL can perform.

With implicit conversions you can specify a literal value in place of data with the correct internal format, and PL/SQL will convert that literal as necessary. In the following example, PL/SQL converts the literal string ‘125’ to the numeric value 125 in the process of assigning a value to the numeric variable:

DECLARE
   a_number NUMBER;
BEGIN
   a_number := '125';
END;

You can also pass parameters of one datatype into a module and then have PL/SQL convert that data into another format for use inside the program. In the following procedure, the second parameter is a date. When I call that procedure, I pass a string value in the form DD-MON-YY, and PL/SQL converts ...

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